The ROG Ally: Fallout on the Toilet Revisited: A Review of Asus, Microsoft, and Other Handheld Devices
It’s a bold promise, and one I was excited to see in action. I wanted to believe and that open-mindedness paid off, even though I was skeptical of the steam deck. Unfortunately, after using the ROG Ally, I’m not convinced that Asus can compete with Valve’s handheld, much less Nintendo’s. Basically, the ROG Ally is for those willing to sacrifice a lot of usability to play Fallout: New Vegas on the toilet.
In practice, downloads didn’t continue, and we lost more battery than if we’d simply put the Ally into hibernate mode — but setting the power button to hibernate means you can accidentally put the system into a deep sleep when you’re simply trying to wake the screen. All the Ally controls are dead until the system reawakens.
There are other issues with Windows gaming handhelds. Another example that didn’t quite make it into our Ally review: Windows portables go into an internet-connected “Modern Standby” mode when you press the power button, theoretically letting you download games and quickly resume an in-progress game while the system’s saving battery.
I am hoping that this is a wake-up call for Microsoft. It is possible that one of the recent ones will be the final straw. Still, the company has a long and troubled history supporting games on Windows, and (rumors suggest) it always comes down to Xbox being a separate division with conflicting incentives. As far as Microsoft actually building that new UI for handheld devices, Krohn says he hasn’t heard anything more than I have.
Specifically, she called out how today’s consoles let you quickly resume a game and said the ROG Ally pushes Microsoft to think about that for PCs as well: “How do we think about integrating this into the Windows platform?” One of the goals is to make it easy to quickly pick up where you left off when playing games on a PC or handheld.
Sones has made similar comments before, as my colleague Tom Warren points out. During another ROG Ally event in April, she discussed working with publishers on the “experience layer” required for these features.
The ROG Ally runs in “Performance” mode, which is slightly faster than the steam deck, in exchange for some more electricity. It’s easy to feel comfortable playing games like Elden Ring, a game that runs a bit slower on my steam deck, at there. The Deck won’t play games if you are plugged in and willing to play games for less than an hour at a time.
Is Prince of Persia really that bad? How frustrated I am about Max Payne 2 on the Ally, and some of its other games
It sounds minor, but connecting to Wi-Fi is one of the first, most basic aspects of setting up a device, and I was already annoyed. This was a theme that came up all the time. I felt myself struggling against the form factor of the Ally. Once, while playing Doom Eternal, I was suddenly snapped out of the game to the Windows desktop, with a large black box filling half the screen. What could have merited such an interruption? “Your battery is running low. You might want to plug in your PC.”
Connecting to Wi-Fi, I found a UI problem that gave me a bad premonition of things to come: The onscreen keyboard I needed to enter my (rather long) Wi-Fi password covered half the password box. It failed to register several letters. I had to hold down the “show password” icon while stretching my fingers to access the onscreen arrow keys to correct those mistakes.
Max Payne 2 is a game that doesn’t run properly on the Steam Deck, but it doesn’t run properly on the Ally, either. The entire game is built around dodging bullets in slow-motion “Bullet Time” while you’re shooting, but I could not pull the trigger while using the joystick. The default keyboard bindings make little sense in other ways, too, completely omitting common keys like C (crouch) and E (interact) and inexplicably binding Escape to the B button while the gamepad’s View and Menu buttons (used to summon menus in XInput games!) Stay completely undecipherable. I didn’t have atrigger or anything like that when I did the redo, which was when all was said and done.
The first time I launched Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on the ROG Ally, it crashed. Then it crashed again when I tried to access the graphical settings and again when it tried to load part of the first level of the game, sometimes throwing strange error messages. I had to get a patch to run on it. Then, I ran into some of the same issues with the keyboard template and triggers: no way to land a jumping sword combo, no way to crouch or drop to a lower ledge, no way to stab with the Dagger of Time without remapping all of my controls.
The first time I launched it on the Deck, it just worked. The 2003 Windows game ran in Linux, tricky-to-render fog and all. It automatically loaded a community controller profile that bound my buttons exactly as I remembered on the PlayStation 2. The right joystick swung the camera a little too quickly, but I fixed that in 10 seconds by summoning the controller configurator and turning down the joystick sensitivity. And that widescreen Windows patch? I dropped the very same files into my Linux game folder with zero modification, and it worked instantly.
ROG Ally is a powerful gaming PC, but what does it need to be like for a portable PC? An Asus rog-ally review
It is my belief that a portable gaming PC is not portable if the user interface is not built for the road. I also believe most people interested in this machine would be better off spending $300 more for our favorite gaming laptop (by Asus, no less). If you really want a portable, maybe save a couple hundred bucks by buying a $400 Steam Deck and adding your own small SSD.
But that doesn’t mean the Asus ROG Ally is a poor product overall — it’s a powerful gaming machine for $700, one that just needs a power outlet and a mouse and keyboard nearby to reach its full potential. I believe some people use this as their only Windows device, and they use it for a variety of reasons, including being able to play games on a couch.
As far as Asus is concerned, I wonder if the stopgap solution is Steam. Maybe the Ally should default to Steam Big Picture or maybe even run SteamOS 3.0 instead of Windows when Valve makes it broadly available. I don’t know what will happen to SteamOS or if the company will support eGPUs from rival Nvidia.
Speaking of rivalries, Microsoft may have precluded the ROG Ally’s SteamOS possibilities because it is made only as a Windows device. But he’s not sure if the deal precludes Asus from supporting SteamOS if users install it themselves.
The least demanding games consume little to no power, and I can usually manage two hours out of moderately intensive titles such as Control with a tweaking or two. With the Ally, I’m seeing an hour and a half. The PC port of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time consumed more power on the Deck than the Ally, for a point of comparison.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23719210/asus-rog-ally-review
Why Windows? Asusrog-ally Review: Xbox and Game Bar, Xbox Gamepad, Xbox Multitasking, and Dual-Algorithm Gameplay
When we asked Asus “why Windows?” the answer was basically that it’s what gamers want because gamers shouldn’t have to leave any of their games behind.
There isn’t an Xbox button on this PC. Whether you’re playing on Steam or Xbox Game Pass or simply using Microsoft’s own Xbox Game Bar, the gamepad controls are incomplete, without an easy way to summon the controls that both Valve and Microsoft encourage you to use to launch, chat, and multitask in an Xbox gaming environment. Asus spokesperson Ester Suh says that the company “will have the option to assign the main Xbox gamepad button to different buttons on the ROG Ally” at some point in the future.
The split touchscreen keyboard isn’t optimized for the places your thumbs will naturally be when holding this device. Scrolling websites and documents by joystick happens in fits and starts rather than smoothly as it does on a Steam Deck. There is an obvious improvement that saves space on the Ally’s screen, but it doesn’t show up on my desktop unless it is a normal taskbar cut in half. I don’t want to have to touch my screen when using Windows 11 because it is easier to navigate by touchscreen than any previous version.
Windows feels foreign on a seven-inch gamepad. We know that Microsoft has been experimenting with a Windows Handheld mode, but this is not the sort of thing we want to see. If you want to do things like type in letters with the left or D-pad, you have to leave fingerprints on the computer screen, and you have to use your right hand topeck every single letter with a too-sensitive mouse.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23719210/asus-rog-ally-review
The Asus ROGAL Review of the Steam Deck and the Problems It’s Having to Deal With (It Still Has a Role in Duck Game)
The launch of the Steam Deck had some serious issues, and I agree with what you said about The Verge not reviewing gadgets on potential. We review what we can see and touch.
Since it tends to hang and Crash on my review unit, the current version of Armoury Crate won’t ship to consumers. Just this Tuesday, I was playing Control when, all of a sudden, I couldn’t shoot or dash or jump or run or do anything except walk and look around. I couldn’t access the controller configurator to check what had happened, either, or switch my controls between desktop and gamepad modes because the entire service had crashed. I had to do a full restart to get my controls back.
The problem was discovered ahead of production and retail units will come with larger keys that won’t get caught underneath and no consumer should ever see it.
The flat ABXY buttons have a satisfying press at first: light but firm, with a nice springy return, audible feedback, and plenty of purchase for a meaty thumb. But when I started hammering on them in some friendly rounds of Duck Game, three of them kept getting stuck… again and again and again. I was unable to shoot or jump in a game where split-second reactions are important. It’s because the keycaps can slightly tilt when you push them at an angle, and their edges can get stuck underneath the frame. Asus graciously sent me a second unit, and it had the same issue.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23719210/asus-rog-ally-review
ROG Ally is SOOOOOOO fast to charge, and it is so smooth to play all 3 hours of The Last of Us: Left Behind
It takes seven screws and a single flick of a spudger to replace the M.2 2230 solid-state drive.
On the plus side, the ROG Ally is way faster to charge — I got 50 percent in 40 minutes while continuing to play. (It takes maybe 30 minutes if you leave it alone.) You can fill the system all the way to 97 or 98 percent with the bundled charger even if you’re playing games in Turbo mode, though it might take a couple of hours to do so.
But turn on Turbo, and I was able to double the input resolution to 856 x 480 (which looks much better upscaled to 1080p) and push the frame rate well above 40 at all times. It was the difference between playing all three hours of The Last of Us: Left Behind in the kids’ bedroom and not playing this at all. There were also boosts in Elden Ring and Redfall.
Seriously, it’s so smooth for a computer this small, and I’m not just talking about games that run at 120Hz. In my tests, the magic of variable refresh rate (VRR) and low frame compensation (LFC) works right down to 30fps.
Source: https://www.theverge.com/23719210/asus-rog-ally-review
The Last of Us Part I: Performance, Battery Life, Glitches, and Disappointments on the AMD Z1 Extreme
You are waiting for a but. Here are a few things to consider, including the Windows operating system, battery life, and glitches. hamstrings the handheld experience.
I managed to sip just 9.8 watt from Slay the Spire, which is playing a 2D game with mostly static images and only 30 frames per second, but I was also playing at the minimum screen brightness, savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay was a savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay savesay My Ally turned itself off at three hours, 38 minutes, but it was probably because of the battery draining fast when it reaches its end.
The good news is that the AMD Z1 Extreme chip at its heart is a big improvement over the previous-gen Ryzen 7 6800U, especially where lower wattages are concerned. Even if it’s mostly a rebranded laptop chip, the Z1 Extreme doesn’t suffer from the “needs more gas!” I had a slow pace in my Ayaneo 2 review.
All values are average frames per second at 720p low, save Elden Ring where I’m measuring minimum frames per second in a particularly demanding part of the game.
The Last of Us Part I, one of the recent crop of disappointing PC ports, is one I’d consider unplayable on the Steam Deck. It isn’t much better on the ROG Ally’s Performance mode, even if you use fancy upscaling techniques like AMD FSR 2.0, it still dips below 30fps after a while.